Album Cover Feature – Clutch “Earth Rocker” (Rock)

The band “Clutch” recently announced a postponed tour due to illness and with that press releases I was reminded of their album “Earth Rocker”. When it first came out back in March this year I first noticed the beautiful album artwork. I am an art lover along with a music lover and appreciate when a band does a great album cover. I think this album caught my attention since it reminds me of a classic vinyl album; you know the ones you want to put on the wall.

The inspiration of this album was that the band wanted their own “Eddie” (Iron Maiden) or Snaggletooth (Motorhead) and dark like those characters this one has something special, even mystic. I won’t say it is as iconic as Eddie (he is a very special character and has years of history) but this cover the band brings something all their own but something familiar at the same time. Various inspirations such as some could say Aztec looking, parts a little 70’s inspiration to slightly even Native American art scene but is put together in a way to make it their own. Again something the bands from the 90’s do very well since they be themselves and are unique throughout their careers.

The frontman Neil Fallon states “We were going to call the record ‘Crucial Velocity’ and we were working on some images for that and it just ended up looking like a Boston record. We just weren’t feeling it. It’s not that those album covers are bad, it’s just not us. So we started thinking that maybe we could call it ‘Earth Rocker’ and Nick [Lakiotes] started sketching this thing up and when we saw where it was going it became like a current idea. It was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what the Earth Rocker looks like.’ I didn’t know what he looked like until I saw that picture and he just kind of exudes a very calm, confident sense of ethereal power without being intimidating.”

Speaking about the final imagery, Fallon adds, “I’m not trying to scare anybody. It’s just, it’s very monolithic and it just seemed to be the visual representation of that and that’s why I think Nick is really good at what he does.”

With a great piece of art and this is what their cover is, comes benefits such as great merchandise from banners to T-shirts and with this image it’s an easy sell. One doesn’t even have to like the band to say “I’d wear that as a shirt or put that up on a wall”. I think Clutch accomplished their goal of creating a character and most of all gave fans something that they will look back at 30 years from now.

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